NEWSLETTER #3 December 19, 2006

I had such great intentions of keeping up the newsletter on at least a weekly basis but better late than never. Our water temperature has been slowly dropping and is now down to 6 degrees C (bottom temperature in 40 feet of water). This is ideal temperature for holding mussels in our wet storage facility and allows us to harvest several days in advance of processing if necessary. This is handy at this time of year as it means we can pick our days and harvest in decent weather although we have had very little winter weather to this point.

As mentioned in our last newsletter we have had a very significant set of sea squirts or tunicates (Ciona intestinalis) and it is certainly a challenge for us. We have been working on a project with the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia on testing and developing a device that will help us control the tunicate population. Together with Mallet Research Services we have made a real breakthrough this fall in our ability to treat our fouled mussel ropes and therefore feel a little more optimistic about our future. Also, Ricky and Ryan have greatly improved our harvesting procedures, which allows us to get rid of a lot of tunicates at harvest, rather than transporting them into the plant for separation from the mussels. Stephanie Howes, our student, who conducts our tunicate settlement monitoring, has finished her survey for the year and there has been not significant settlement since the first week in November.

We did a lot of complaining in 2006 about our weather with a very wet spring and early summer, but in the end, all of that rainfall made for excellent growth of our mussel crop and we have been very pleased with our quality all year long.

At this time of year, there is a little more opportunity to think about marketing efforts, an area in which we are admittedly quite weak. Our first goal always is to find and satisfy markets close to home where our competitive advantage is the ability to get our mussels to the customers as fresh as possible. We like to think that we do a good job for our south shore customers but we are not satisfied with our marketing efforts in Halifax. We still sell once a week to Fisherman’s Market International in Bedford but they are buying most of their mussels from a Newfoundland grower. Our once a week delivery into Halifax does not result in the freshness that we want for our customers. The other market that seems natural to us is the Annapolis Valley. Whenever I go to the valley, I am impressed with how busy the area is but I am not impressed with our mussel sales there. It is obviously time to get off of my butt and start knocking on some doors.

A reminder that the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia’s annual conference, Scotian Pride is coming up on Jan. 26 and 27^th at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax. I don’t think that the agenda is finalized yet but I know that the topics will include Tunicate Research and Mitigation, and environmental practices, two topics of great interest to me.

Indian Point Marine Farms had its Christmas party on December l6th at the Oak Island Inn in Western Shore and a great time was had by all. We would like to wish all of our customers, suppliers and friends a very happy holiday and a healthy, prosperous and sustainable New Year.